Many condensers employed in air conditioning or refrigeration systems at the present time utilize one or more serpentine conduits on the vapor side. In order to prevent the existence of an overly high pressure differential from the vapor inlet to the outlet, which would necessarily increase system energy requirements, the flow passages within such tubes are of relatively large size to avoid high resistance to the flow of vapor and/or condensate.
This, in turn, means that the air side of the tubes will be relatively large in size. The relatively large size of the tubes on the air side results in a relatively large portion of the frontal are of the air side being blocked by the tubes and less area available in which air side fins may be disposed to enhance heat transfer.
As a consequence, to maintain a desired rate of heat transfer, the air side pressure drop will become undesirably large, and a commensurately undesirably large system energy requirement in moving the necessary volume of air through the air side of the condenser will result.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the above problems.